Shooting Fopas

P

Pj0759@aol.com

New member
Was reminicing the other day and was wondering what kind of gun fopas you all may have experienced over the years? I personally have had a couple of close encounters,one, no fault of my own,and the other ,yeah,my fault. As a teenager I had a friend next door,who to say the least had limited knowledge of guns etc. We were sitting at kitchen talble one day and he found an old Colt .32 pistol which he proceded to point at me and say it was not loaded,next thing I know "boom" felt some air and heard crashing glass. After cleaning my trousers I discovered that the bullet nicked the corner of sunglasses I was wearing and passed through a window pane and glass. Needless to say i was P%$##! He tried to explain it away to his parents that he was trying to get some ice out of a tray and slipped and went through the window,his Dad bought it but his Mom no way. My son who is 15 now,was always very interested in my handguns. I kept a S&W 66,6" as my home defense gun. He was not allowed to handle it period without me there,he was about 11 at the time. The gun was in a case and moved into a room I was remodeling,he asked if he could hold it,and although I was very close I was not paying the kind of attention I should have. Next thing I know BLAM,ears ringing etc,the lights went out. First thing I checked was if he was ok,he was,but speechless. He had picked up the gun and for some reason was going to pull the hammer back and then let it back,it slipped on him and fired,went through a lightbulb plugged into the wall and lodged in landing(it is still there)I was thankful he had the gun pointed at ground like he was taught,and more importantly any nonchalantness he had about guns disappeared that day. He to this day is careful as I could have hoped,and respects the responsibility that comes with handling guns....PJ
 
Faus paux, I think. There are quite a few threads on ADs/NDs if you search.

I was wondering if it's considered a faus paux to shoot when someone in the next lane has already begun shooting (like when bowling), or is it more appropriate to wait until the person has finished their string of shots and is reloading. I ask this because it's disconcerting when the guy in the next lane is shooting his 7mm Rem mag rifle, and I'm trying to concentrate on my shooting, and the whole place reverberates.

[This message has been edited by Futo Inu (edited February 26, 2000).]
 
faux pas (from French for 'false step') -- remark or act made in poor taste; a social blunder.

I haven't written anything technical since my Master's thesis (many years ago). I'm always having to look up the pronunciation or spelling of words I used to know well. Must be getting Alzheimic.

[This message has been edited by TEXAS LAWMAN (edited February 26, 2000).]
 
Pj,

I think there are more of us here at TFL that have had a 'faux pas', then care to admit.
We tend to learn from that experience, if the 'near miss' is just that.

It's sort of like an Anti or maybe a Neutral having a confrontation with a BG, and then all of a sudden seeing the 'light' of RKBA and self-preservation. Provided, of course, they're still alive to see the 'light'.

And so it goes...



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...defend the 2nd., it protects us all.
No fate but what we make...
 
As far as the range Faux Pas, Do NOT fire hot 45LC handloads when the guy next to you is reloading and leaning foward in his booth. Blinded the poor fellow temporarily, good thing he was a friend, and wasn't affected all that bad. It was embarrassing though. I promised next time to move a couple of booths down. :0

DaHaMac
 
This happened to a friend of mine. He had a friend over one afternoon, and they were messing around with their guns. My friend had a .45, and his friend had a 10mm. Anyway the 10mm guy was dropping a 10mm cartridge down the barrel of my friend's .45, and then pointing the gun down so the cartridge slid out the barrel and onto the table. He did this a few times, and then dropped it down the barrel, pointed the gun at the table so the 10mm cartridge would fall out of the barrel, (it didn't), and proceeded to pull the trigger. Well, you can guess what happened. Booom! The bullet hit the table, and richocheted into the wall. If someone would have been sitting across from him, he'd have been in bad shape. And this guy supposedly was trying to get a job as a cop! Needless to say, this guy was NOT allowed to ever touch a gun while in my friend's house! In fact, I never saw the guy after this happened, and this happened over 10 years ago. The stupidity of some people know no bounds.... :eek:

Tom
 
Isn't "faux pas" from the latin, meaning'
" I #$%^#$ up?"
Here in Anoka county many years ago a Sgt cleaned his S&W 66 and aimed it at the wall and pulled the trigger. BLAM!!!
Bullet went through wall and hit the ear lobe of a deputy in another room. Deputy is promoted to Sgt. We called it the "Van Gogh" promotion.
There is a God me thinks after that one.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A security guard at Liberty State bank in St. Paul MN, in late 1960's took his shotgun inside to check out something. Gun went off and buckshot hit the wall over bank officers desk. He put a picture over the holes and cleaned up some debris.
He should have went into the next room where the buckshot blew stuff off a desk including an IBM Selectric.
The bank officer thought it odd his picture was moved down to a few feet from the top of his desk. As he moved it and saw this rat like hole the secretary came in to report "vandalism."
Another employee reported "vandalism" a few minutes later. A pellet or two went into a third office and hit an aquarium.
Nice shooting eh?
 
Oh I dunno. The best one (not an AD/ND) was a kid at the range who was having accuracy problems with a GP-100.

He asked a buddy of mine why the gun was grouping poorly. There were no obvious problems, so the kid asks my buddy to shoot it and see what he thinks. Mark proceeded to shoot a very tight group at a measured 25 yards. It is literally one of the tightest groups I've ever seen fired offhand. (the load was a 125 JHP)

Mark hands the gun back and mumbled something about "fit".........

Giz
 
These may fall under the 'range courtesy' category as opposed to faux pas. These are regarding indoor range behavior.

1) Don't bring your target back to you when the guy next to you is still shooting.

2) ALWAYS make sure everyone has their 'ears' on before firing .44 mag.

and then there's the 'gun shop' etiquette as well...

1) ALWAYS unload the gun before entering.

2) Even if the gun is unloaded, don't point it at anything or anyone you don't intend to shoot.

3) If you don't know, ask how to operate/break down/etc... the gun ASK!


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Anarchism: The radical notion that I am the sole authority when it comes to deciding what's best for me.
 
Gizmo--

We had handloaded a couple of varieties of cartridges for a couple of Blackhawks my old roommate and my father had recently acquired, and went out to the range to shoot 'em.

Dad's custom Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum shot SUPERBLY, putting tiny, tiny little groups on the paper at 25 yds with full-house magnum loads, and turning over nice (though not quite as tight, strangely enough) groups with Specials.

Bill's 8" Blackhawk in .45 LC was giving him problems, though. Bill was lucky to hit the paper at 15 yards! What the heck? I asked if I could try it (I'm a fair bit better shot than he is.). He handed me the revolver he had been about to shoot again and I sat down and took a very careful rest and squeezed off 6 of my very best squeezes. NO GOOD!!! What the heck!?! His revolver was a new-style Blackhawk, to be sure, but they're not giving up accuracy THAT badly! I had loaded those .45 LC loads myself using the same setup and techniqe as had the .44 loads! Even used the same powder and same type LSWC bullet!

As I pushed out the empty cases on the .45, I noticed something odd-- the cases didn't want to slide out easily. I save my cases for reloading, and looked at them before I tossed them in the can. ALL 6 OF THEM were split from the mouth to halfway down to the rim! The case walls ballooned out from the rim. Check headstamps, and shudder. My roommate Bill had loaded his revolver from the same box of cartridges that Dad had just been loading his .44 with. They shot, but NOT well. Fortunately Bill had not reached into the box of Magnums. Could've been disasterous. Because I actually shot a cylinder of .44's through the .45 Colt, I count myself as a contributer to this foolishness, but I do point out that I didn't actually load the pistol! :)
 
LP - I did that once when shooting my .44 Redhawk and my .41 Blackhawk. Wish I had kept the brass.

I was by myself on the range. :(

Giz
 
Whew! At the pressures involved with .41 Magnums, that could get pretty western, in a hurry! How badly did the brass fare? The Special cases we found only to be ballooned and split to about halfway down.

Also, how were your groups? Any keyholes?
(We had a couple-- probably smacked that forcing cone pretty hard. Good thing they were all lead-bullet loads.)

The leap from .41 to .429 is not as bad as the leap from .429 to .451, but the gap makes a bigger difference in the pressures you were dealing with!
 
Whew! At the pressures involved with .41 Magnums, that could get pretty western, in a hurry! How badly did the brass fare? The Special cases we found only to be ballooned and split to about halfway down.

Also, how were your groups? Any keyholes?
(We had a couple-- probably smacked that forcing cone pretty hard. Good thing they were all lead-bullet loads.)

The leap from .41 to .429 is not as bad as the leap from .429 to .451, but the bigger difference would have been in the smaller gap, in the pressures you were dealing with!
 
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